1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to communication circuits and customer data information systems, and more specifically to communication circuits and customer data information systems that provide easy, efficient, and accurate access to the customer data information for use during emergency situations involving facility failures and service outages.
2. Discussion of Background Information
Telecommunications networks provide communication paths or routes for communication between a source or origination point and a destination or termination point. These networks may include millions of circuits, or signal paths, that provide the routes for communication between a source location and a destination location. There are many types of circuits, from those that carry a single signal to those that carry multiple signals. Also, these various types of circuits may have various information transfer rates or bandwidth. Due to the many types of circuits, a communication from a source to a destination may have a variety of paths that it may take to get from source location to the destination location. This availability of a variety of paths is important should a particular circuit or path breakdown for some reason. In these situations, a communication from a source to a destination may be rerouted from a path through circuits that would normally be used, but are faulty, to an alternate path of circuits that successfully route the communication.
However, before a communication can be rerouted, a determination must be made as to how, or if, it can be rerouted. To help make this determination, all information related to the communication network, including the circuits and other information, may need to be reviewed. This information may be stored in a database. Personnel that service and/or maintain the communications network may use a facility information system which provides a user interface that allows users (e.g., service personnel) to review details regarding the communications network. This facility information system provides access to the database and presents specific information about the communications network based on input from the user. Therefore, should a circuit have problems, data related to the faulty circuit may be obtained from the database. This data may contain information regarding other affected circuits, affected customers, and possible alternative routes.
Current facility information systems provide a user interface that is character based. This presents problems in that it is cumbersome to navigate around using this interface. Most options must be accessed by traversing through a tree of menu options. Also, if a user starts out in one menu, and traverses through the tree to get to the option desired, after selection of the option, the user must back out of the menu tree to get back to the original starting menu screen. This can be time consuming and inconvenient for the user who must remember how to get back to where (s)he started.
Further, current facility information systems access databases that only contain information related to the circuits of the communications network that reside in that area. For example, information related to the circuits for a particular state would reside in a database located in that state. Facility information systems in that state generally have access to the database that contains information regarding the circuits of the communications network that are located in that particular state. This presents a problem where customers that use these circuits, and circuits that reside in different states and that connect to these, are affected. These customers may be affected when a faulty circuit in one state affects circuits in other states, but the facility information system can only access information related to circuits of the state of the faulty circuit. Such customers may include common carriers such as AT&T, MCI, and Sprint, or private carriers. The users of the facility information system will usually work for service providers that provide the communication network and telephone services within a LATA (Local Access and Transport Area) that may extend across several states. Therefore, current facility information systems that are limited to viewing circuits only within the state that they reside cannot adequately service customers that use circuits in several states when a problem or outage occurs.
Moreover, the databases that contain information regarding circuits within a particular state are updated infrequently. Usually these databases are updated roughly every month. Therefore, users of the facility information system may not be viewing the latest information regarding the communication network even upon accessing the database.